Five Times Through the Three-year Cycle of Readings: Homily for the Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ

Gen  14:18-20

1 Cor 11:23-26

Ps 110

Luke 9:11b-17

 

Jesuits are described as contemplatives in action.  Unlike our Trappist brothers who live in monastic cloister and silence, contemplating the word of God, we move around a lot.  Just ask my mom how many phone numbers and addresses I’ve had in my ten years as a Jesuit (it is now 25).  She used to carefully erase the old one before putting the new one in her address book.  Now she uses a recycled sticky note. 

 

It has been said that the Jesuit cloister is the highway.  Our oftentimes mobile work, drives our prayer life and our prayer life, oftentimes entered into while on the move,  drives our work.  Overall, action seems to trump contemplation most of the time.  

 

But a feast such as the Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ reminds us of the contemplative side of our lives.  Not just Jesuit lives.  But the lives of all believers.  The Solemnity of Corpus Christi pulls us into the contemplative because It is an abstract feast that doesn’t recall a specific event.  

 

The Church’s liturgical calendar is crammed with solemnities and feasts—Christmas, Easter, The Ascension, The Annunciation—that recall specific events in the history of salvation, feasts that recall specific moments in the history of the world.   They are events with a narrative flow.  There is a story that is told and retold.  We can place ourselves in the action, we can participate in the narrative.   We can close our eyes and, with only a little imagination, see the events unfold on an inner movie screen.  

 

However, on this feast we have to sit in silence.  There is no script.  There is no “story line.”  We are called to contemplate a dogma of faith.  

 

We don’t contemplate an event in the life of Jesus but the gift of Christ truly and substantially present in the eucharist.  It is overwhelming to consider Christ present in the bread and wine that we receive. It is overwhelming to recall Christ present in the eucharist that we adore on the altar.  The Real Presence is a stumbling block for some.  They can understand symbol.  They can understand sign.  They can understand metaphor.  They simply can’t understand real.  

 

The bread of life appears in the three readings and the psalm.  

 

It is a happy moment to hear the name of Melchizedek less than twenty-four hours after being ordained. “You are a priest for ever, in the line of Melchizedek.”  Melchizedek is a mysterious figure.  There is no history about him, there is no genealogy tracing his descent.  All other references to Melchizedek derive from this single mention in Genesis.  

 

The reading from Paul’s letter to the Corinthians includes the words of consecration, the words, the formula, the action, that bring us here daily.  Elaborating on these words, trying to explain them in greater depth, would be either gilding the lily or taking more risks than a priest should at his first Mass.  

 

The feeding of the multitude from little is a challenge.  How did it happen?  What were the physics, the chemistry, or the economics of such a miraculous event?  

 

How is not the relevant question. 

 

The import of this gospel narrative is that when we are hungry and when we thirst on the journey of our lives, Christ is present to us in the eucharist.  Christ is there to restore and refresh us.  

 

We just heard in the Gospel, “they all ate until they had enough.”  The feeding the multitude from very little, reminds us—it was in fact a preview of what was to come—that from the  small piece of bread that he broke the night before he died Jesus has nourished, and will continue to nourish, untold billions, generously and completely.

 

The Body and Blood of Christ is an unending source of nourishment, sustenance, and comfort.  The only thing we can do on this feast is to sit in awe and contemplate this great gift.  The only thing we need do is to receive the Body and Blood of Christ and then continue on the journey.

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The Sunday lectionary or the book of readings for Mass is laid out on a three year cycle designated as year A, B,, or C.  In year A the predominant readings are from Matthew, B from Mark, and C from Luke.  This year is Year C in the cycle.  I celebrated my first Mass the day following ordination on this feast 15 years ago, 10 June 2007.  It too was year C.  Thus, in 15 years I’ve made five cycles of the lectionary, still discovering new things.  

 

Was up in Vermont for several days.  Got back last night around 8:00 PM pretty much exhausted.  However, pushing to drive last night seemed a better idea than leaving on a 3 ½ hour trip at 6:00 AM, knowing that I have a Mass at 11:15. 

 

Weather in VT was not great but did get a little shooting in.  Very little.  

Bee on a daisy

A few wildflowers on the banks of Lake Madeleine

Gilbert and Sullivan fans please sing along . . . 

An empty road running through the valley halfway up the mountain

Shadows of glasses in a glass cabinet in a mid-century  kitchen

The glass cabinet and the shadows

In the Name of the Father: Homily for the Solemnity of the Holy Trinity

Dt 4:32-24, 39-40

Ps 33:4-5,6,9,18-19, 20,22

Rom 8:14-17

Mt 28:16-20

 

We recall the Most Holy Trinity at the begining and end of every Mass.  We invoke the Trinity every time we pray.  We call upon the Trinity whenever we say the words:  Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  What we call the sign of the cross or the Trinitarian formula is critical to every sacrament from baptism to the anointing of the sick and dying.  This sign begins and ends everything the Church does.  

 

We read in The Catechism of the Catholic Church, “Christians are baptized in the name of the Father and of the Son  and of the Holy Spirit "Catholics, in particular, are NEVER baptized, or to be baptized,  by a whacked-out priest or deranged deacon—both have happened—using the bizarre formula: in the name of the Creator, the Redeemer and the Sanctifier.  If that formula is used the pseudo-sacrament is invalid and the child must be baptized using proper form.  Politically correct or so-called “gender sensitive’ rewording liturgically illegitimate and forbidden.  The Catechism continues,  "The mystery of the Most Holy Trinity is the central mystery of Christian faith and life. It is the mystery of God in himself. . . .It is therefore the source of all the other mysteries of faith . . . It is the light that enlightens them. . . . It is the most fundamental and essential teaching in the hierarchy of the truths of faith.”  

 

Every time we make the sign of the cross throughout the course of a day, we recall an unfathomable mystery, a mystery that can be neither explained nor dissected.  The Trinity remains inexplicable despite the vast number of books written about it.  Though each book may contain a tiny insight into the nature of the Trinity, no book captures the essence of the Trinity.  The sum of all books written about the Holy Trinity, will ever capture its essence.  In the final analysis, the dogma of the Trinity depends on faith and faith alone. 

 

Faith does not rest  on logical proof or material evidence. As Paul instructed in his Letter to the Hebrews: “Faith is the conviction of things unseen.”   We must become comfortable with faith as mysterious because despite the absence of logical proof, despite the impossibility of philosophy or science  to truly explain the Trinity, there is no Christianity without the Trinity.  Father.  Son.  Holy Spirit.

 

As a legend about St. Augustine holds, he was walking along a beach trying to understand One God in Three Divine Persons through logic.  He noticed a little boy digging a hole in the sand. The kiddo was walking back and forth between the water and the hole with a seashell filled with seawater.  After emptying the shell it into the hole he returned to the water for more.  Augustine observed him for a while and then asked what he was doing.  The boy replied that he was

emptying the sea into the hole.  Augustine asked how he could hope to empty the sea into a small hole?  The child responded, “I can empty the sea into this hole more easily than you can understand the Trinity.”  The message behind this legend is a reminder that there are things the human intellect will never grasp.

Even if we were to comprehend the Trinity, the limits of human vocabulary, the emptiness of all languages, the pallid nature of similes and metaphors, would prevent us from explaining it to anyone else.

 

The word Trinity does not appear in the Bible.  The understanding of the Trinity grew as the Church began to consider what Jesus had said and done during His time on earth. The doctrine of the Trinity is the doctrine that in the unity of God there are three Persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. There is only One God, yet the Persons are distinct. Thus, Jesus always speaks of His Father as distinct from Himself but He also notes that “I and the Father are One.”  The same is true of the Holy Spirit.

 

The Trinity is, and will remain, a mystery.  The doxology: "Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be; world without end.  Amen" reaffirms that fundamental truth of our faith. It can also fuel hours of contemplation

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Sometimes I choose photos strictly for color with no attempt to be coherent as to place  etc. This is one of those times. 

+ Fr Jack, SJ, MD

Come Holy Ghost, Creator Blest: Homily for the Solemnity of Pentecost

 Acts 2:1-11

Ps 104

1 Cor 12:3-7,12-13

Jn 20:19-23

 

The word Pentecost derives from the Greek meaning ‘fiftieth day.'  The word is not unique to the Church. Today's solemnity is historically, symbolically, and, as it began at sunset yesterday and will and at sunset tomorrow, it is calendrically linked to the Jewish celebration of Pentecost, also known as Shavuot. 

 

Shavuot commemorates God's giving the Torah to Moses on Mt. Sinai fifty days after the Exodus.  It falls fifty days after the first seder of Passover, always between May 15^th and June 14^th.  In the Catholic liturgical year Pentecost is celebrated on the fiftieth day after the Solemnity of the Resurrection of the Lord, no earlier than May 10^th or later than June 13^th.  Just as Moses received the wisdom and teaching of the Torah fifty days after the Exodus, the Church received the wisdom and teaching of the Holy Spirit fifty days after Jesus’ exodus from death. 

 

The first reading is dramatic. Wind.  Fire.  Speaking in tongues. An ideal scene for a Cecil B. DeMille movie.  The people were shocked when they heard the unsophisticated Galileans speaking in whatever language necessary to tell the city's many visitors the Good News of Jesus.  The speaking in tongues is sometimes referred to as “the reversal of Babel,” the undoing of the event that caused the earth's multiplicity of languages, a symbol of disunity.  At Pentecost, that which had been split apart by human pride at Babel was reunited through Jesus’ obedience to the Father.  That which had been shattered by hubris was reassembled by Jesus, who sent the Holy Spirit as He had promised.

 

As Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “To each individual the manifestation of the Spirit is given for some benefit.”  He listed some of those gifts in his Letter to the Romans. Today we celebrate the giving of those gifts.  Each of us receives unique gifts of the Holy Spirit that are not identical or interchangeable with those of another.  Our task is to discover and develop our unique gifts throughout life.  

 

In some parts of American society it is fashionable, indeed it is a form of virtue signaling and wokeness, to deny even the possibility--to say nothing of the reality--of differences and distinctions, of abilities and inabilities, of truth and mistruth.  The risk of not hewing to, teaching about, or preaching the narratives du jour may result in job loss, demands for public mea culpas and penances, or cancellation, the American version of Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag

 

Today, many choose to deny fundamental biological differences with delusional intensity.  Apparently the mantra “follow the science” is demanded only under certain conditions while it is optional under others. Denying differences fuels a heightened sense of specialness in which each individual or faction insists that his, her, or the group's specialness must be recognized as the most special of all forms of specialness, even to having a day, week, or month dedicated to trumpeting that specialness.

 

One of my physiology professors at Temple shared a parody about the body

in which the general outline was an argument among organs and body parts 

as to which was the most important, which was the supreme controller, which was the MOST critical to the body’s function, comfort, and survival. It was long, it was hilarious, and it cannot be repeated in sacred space.  However, the main point was that there is no MOST important organ.  All of the body's organs and organ systems are equally necessary to life.  Each has unique functions that cannot be replaced or substituted by another.  The lungs cannot do the work of the liver, the liver cannot do the work of the heart,  and the pancreas definitely cannot become kidneys. 

 

One of the most dangerous lies ever told is: "You can be anything you want to be." No one can become anything he or she wants to be simply by wanting to be that thing, or, in current terminology, by self-identifying as it. All of us have certain immutable limits determined by chromosomal and genetic makeup, anatomy, and physiology as well as many other factors. All strengths are balanced by weaknesses.  Native abilities are enhanced by inabilities, potential in some areas is balanced by a complete lack of same in others.  The only equality among humans is that all are sinners loved by God. 

 

Comparing the account of Pentecost in Acts with the account of the Holy Spirit’s descent as narrated in John's Gospel may be confusing. "When the time for Pentecost was fulfilled, they were all in one place together." The descent of the Holy Spirit in Acts was clearly fifty days after Jesus' resurrection.  "And when He had said this,  He breathed on them and said to them, "Receive the Holy Spirit." John's Gospel seems to indicate that the disciples received the Holy Spirit

soon after the Resurrection while Jesus was present among them.  How does one reconcile the two accounts?  There is no need to do so. 

 

Yesterday's gospel ended with the final verse of John's Gospel:  "There are also many other things that Jesus did, but if these were to be described individually, I do not think the whole world would contain the books that would be written."  We cannot and must not isolate discrete moments or episodes

from what is one integral event, the event of Jesus' revelation of the Father. 

 

As the late Jesuit Father Stanley Marrow explained, "He who dies on the cross, 

is he who rises from the dead, returns to the Father who sent him, and sends his Holy Spirit on all who confess him as Lord and Son of God.”  The gifts and graces of the Holy Spirit have been bestowed on us. That is all we need to know. 

The logistics are unimportant.

 

Our task is to cooperate with those gifts and graces in the manner to which each of us is called. 

 

Our mandate is to share the news of Jesus with those whom we meet in whatever language necessary.

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The photos are black and whites taken in Lyon, France in the summer of 2014.  Terrific city, superb food and a Jesuit community in an excellent location, a short walk across the river.  Wandered around most Saturday mornings.  Didn't entirely feel comfortable walking around late at night as much as I did in Ljubljana or Taipei.  

Fr. Jack, SJ, MD